What Is Love?
by MasterSatanOverlord
Summary: Jean has managed to find himself in a love triangle, he loves a certain blond but Marco is totally infatuated with his best friend. This is the story of how he responds to being officially rejected. How he finds comfort in the oddest place. How he finds love once more. Also, this is the third and final spin-off of Reactions (The other two being What Is This Thing? and Is This?).


**So here is Jean's after Reactions response to everything. This is starting up after chapter 8 of the story, so there's that. You don't really need to Reactions or the other spinoffs, but it might be useful. At the very least if you're completely confused as to what's going on, it's probably explained in one of the others (Reactions, What Is This Thing?, and Is This?).**

Eren grabs my arm and pulls me out of the room, I followed easily. I wouldn't be able to sit in the office while Armin and Captain Levi did who knows what. Once out of the room I slow a bit and Eren releases my arm. I bite my lip and furrow my brows, looking down. I know Armin had told me he wasn't interested, but… "Hey, Eren?" This was the last thing I expected myself to do.

"Yeah?" He asks, pausing his steps to allow me to slowly catch up.

"Why did Armin choose Levi?" I look up at him, and he seems surprised by the question and uncomfortable. I am too but it's drowned out by the rejection. Yes, the blond had rejected me before, but this time it felt final. The other times felt more like he was just trying to change the subject. Like I could still have hope. But this. This was the way he had firmly rejected me. This is how I found out.

"I uh..." Eren doesn't seem to know what to say. He's waving his hands around and his eyes are shifting like he's looking for an escape from this conversation. He sighs and begins to walk again, I follow after and he begins to speak again. "Love is strange. You can't really help who you fall in love with," he begins as he takes the turn to his room. I follow after him, the situation couldn't get weirder. Eren Yeager was comforting me after I had been rejected by his best friend. The whole thing felt backward. "So it's not really as though Armin could help it, besides..." He trails off, opening his door and gesturing me in. "I know there's someone else that really loves you. For a long time even." I walk in and sit on his bed, he joins me after closing the door.

I look up at him, tearing my gaze from the light covers on his mattress. "What?" There was no way, he was just trying to make me feel better, or mess with me.

"What do you mean what?" He looks at me like I'm crazy. "There is no way you've missed the way Marco is always gazing up at you with those big brown eyes of his filled with admiration and love and being all gushy and hanging on your every word! Absolutely no way!"

"M-Marco? You're imagining things Eren, we're just friends… We grew up together.." Even as I say this, I begin to search my memories of Marco. I had never really looked at him as anything other than a friend, but now it was clear that he wasn't thinking the same. "B-but..." I don't really have words to say, I just look at Eren, hoping for answers but knowing he can't provide them.

He shrugs, flopping back onto his bed with a quiet grunt and staring up at the ceiling. "I just call it as I see it, man. And Marco definitely is in deep." His eyes slide shut and I move to his side, turning my body to face him. "I don't really know what to tell you."

I sigh and slide off his bed, heading to the door again. "Get some rest Eren." I know I needed it.

As I'm about to leave, I can hear him return the gesture and I shut the door to retrace my steps back to my own room. I walk in slowly and sink down into my bed, I can hear Marco speaking to me but I can't comprehend his words as I tug off my uniform before wrapping myself up in the blanket. I mutter out a goodnight to both Marco and Armin, who had come in at some point before drifting off to sleep.

* * *

I can feel a warm hand grabbing my shoulder, shaking gently as Marco calls out my name softly. "Jean. Jean wake up." I groan and roll onto my back, looking up at the freckled boy hovering just above me. The soft light of morning streaming in to illuminate his face, making him look angelic as a smile takes over his lips. "You look like hell."

"Gee thanks." My voice is still rough with sleep, I sit up, the blanket falling off my upper body to gather at my hips. I rub at my face before peering up at him again, he was no longer bent over me and was now pulling on fresh clothes.

"Sleep well?" He asks and despite my urge to retort crankily, I realize that he has no idea what's going on. I'm not angry with him so I'm not going to take out my frustrations on him either.

"Of course not. How about you?" I get myself off the bed as well, noting that Armin was already gone. My frown deepens a bit, but I focus my attention instead on my best friend. I had been neglecting Marco lately and I did feel bad.

"Probably the best I could." I nod, understanding what he means. Sleep is difficult to come by, and rest without nightmares impossible.

"Well, let's go eat. It sounds like today's training is going to be torturous…" I say, opening our door once I'm dressed and ushering out a giggling Marco. I roll my eyes at him, but his laughter is nice, it fills the silence and reminds me that there might be hope in this world after all. Something beautiful in this cruel reality.

We make our way to the eating hall, talking about nothing in particular as usual, and I enjoy the peace of the daily routine. I don't think about anything else, I just pay attention to what's going on around me and I feel like in really seeing Marco and Armin and Eren for the first time. Like I'm really only just now seeing my life. I give Eren a sheepish smile, hoping that whatever truce we had called up last night was still in effect. He might be an ass, but he had good intentions.

 **So this is all for now, but you can be sure that I will be updating again.**

 **I'm setting up a sort of schedule for the chapters I write up. I'll post again as soon as that's decided and I'll put up the schedule on my profile, it'll probably just be a rotation, but it'll be something.**

 **Thank you so much for reading!**


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